Offline ‘stranger’ and online lurker: methods for an ethnography of illicit transactions on the darknet

Abstract

In 2011, the illicit online marketplace ‘Silk Road’ opened for business. Located on the darknet, accessed via the Tor browser, Silk Road was the first of a new breed of darknet marketplaces (DNMs) and smartphone app-based drug markets. Participants on these transact under closely guarded aliases using sophisticated encryption. This article examines how ethnographers might study DNMs and the app-based drug trade. I spent over four years observing and interacting on these marketplaces and associated chat forums, following offline participant observation in a variety of criminal markets which provide useful methodological comparison to the DNM and smartphone app fieldwork sites. This article discusses my methods, highlights differences in online versus offline ethical concerns and risks, and I make suggestions to further the development of a formal methodology for digital ethnography of criminal and hidden online populations.

Keywords

darknet markets digital ethnography ethics ethnographic methods illicit activities online drug markets smartphone app drug markets

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